Things that drive me up the wall

I said in anotehr thread "I hate a great deal more than just sucker :P"

So for lack of snythign better to do, here are some of them:

1) Superstition.

I'm not talking of gambling superstitions, because I already covered that, nor of superstitions meant to control what is uncontrollable (like weather). No, in this case I mean irrational idiocies that serve no purpose and may bring harm. Things like "alternative medicine," faith healing, but above all else the preposterous notion that eclipses are "bad."

Back in the days before the great Eclispe of 91 (it was long and visible accross a long swath of highly populated land) I heard way too many thigns to list here, so i'll just list the top two. both, unfortunately, involve my family:

1) my sister in law was pregnant at the time. Several of her relatives, including her mother, and her friends advised her to either lock herself inside the house while the eclipse took place, or leave town for somewhere "safe" (I'm screaming inside). Worse yet many advised her to travel to Cuernavaca, a city less than 60 miles away and well within the path of the eclipse. Oh, the idea was that if she "exposed" herself to the eclipse, her child could be "hurt" in some unspecified way.

I've no idea what she did. I know she didn't leave town, but I never asked her, or my brother, what she did during the eclipse. I rather like her, and i want to go on liking her. So I don't want to know.

2) When there's any kind of eclipse, people are warned not to lok directly at it, lest they do permanent damage to their eyes. This is aboslutely true, but the way the warning is worded is missleading. What can damage your eyes is looking directly at the sun. It's simply too bright, and it can damage your eyes permanently, even blind you, if you stare at it long enough. But eclipses have nothign to with that.

During an eclipse, in the phase when the Moon is covering the Sun, the overall intensity of the Sun's luminosity decreases. therefore it is easier to look directly at the Sun without feeling the pain or discomfort you'd normally feel, and therefore you're tempted to look straight at it fro long periods of time. if you do that, you will hurt your eyesight permanently, maybe even go blind.

So you don't look directly at the Moon crawling over the Sun (once the whole Sun is covered, it's safe to look at the show directly). You use a camera obscura, or a strong light filter (not sunglasses, but something more akin to a welder's goggles).

That's fact, and the advice is sensible. The superstition is you'll go blind if you even glance at the sky vefore, during or after an eclipse. My father stayed in his office all day long, with the blinds shut, rather than see a once in a lifetime amazing spectacle. The more I tried to explain it was safe, the more he resisted. Hell, I even told him to stay indoors util totality, then look out the window. he'd have none of that either.

Regarding point #1, that was a very popular myth with the 2009 eclipse. On the news they said the path of totality covered more people than any other eclipse in human history, but may not have been the most watched, because that myth was believed by so many people in India and China, who would have stayed indoors.

Regarding your point #2, I think it would help if you explained the difference between a partial and a total eclipse. People familiar with partial eclipses only may not understand your point. I tried hard to do explain the difference in my eclipse report of 2009.

Quote: Wizard

Regarding your point #2, I think it would help if you explained the difference between a partial and a total eclipse. People familiar with partial eclipses only may not understand your point. I tried hard to do explain the difference in my eclipse report of 2009.

Sure.

The apparent diameter of both Sun and Moon as seen from Earth are identical. But they vary because a) the Earth is on an elliptical orbit about the Solar System's center of gravity, which lies just above the Sun's atmosphere (the Sun also orbits this spot, as do all planets and everything else in the System), therefore the distance to the Sun varies over the course of a year. b) the Moon has a similar orbit around the Earth-Moon system's center of gravity (which lies deep within the Earth, and yes Earth orbits itself, sort of), which induces distance variations. and c) the Moon's orbit does not lie flat with the plane of the Equator, therefore it's sometimes above or below the Earth's waist, so to speak.

Therefore when the Moon crosses the path of the Sun, as seen from Earth, the apparent sizes of both bodies may or may not be the same (viewing angle from Earth also influences things). If they are, then depending on the paths the Moon will completely cover the Sun, leaving only the Corona visible (that's the Sun's atmosphere). This is a total solar Eclipse, which is 100% safe to see once the whole Sun is covered. This phase is called totality. Stars and planets become visible, with the constellations backwards as if in a mirror image.

When the diameters don't quite match, then the Moon covers only part of the Sun. Since the Sun's surface is always visible, it's always too bright to look at directly. this is called a partial or annular solar Eclipse, since the Sun's light forms a ring (annulus) around the Moon.

In either case, while the Moon crawls over the Sun, it's not safe to look directly at the show. There are ways around it, like light filters or the camera obscura (look it up in Wikipedia), or the simple expedient of making a pin-sized hole on some cardboard and holding that directly between the eclipse and a piece of something white and clean, like a cloth (this is a pinhole camera).

Also in either case, looking up at the sky in any direction other than the Sun's is as safe as doing so every day. You don't go blind from looking at clouds or airplanes or blue sky, and you won't during an eclipse, the day of the eclipse, or minutes before the eclipse, as the idiot superstition would have you believe.

It's the Sun, only the Sun and nothing but the Sun that's too bright to look at directly at any time in any place (sunset is almost as dangerous to the eyes as an eclipse). In fact, the Sun is so bright you couldn't look directly at it safely from even much farther away from Earth. even as far away as Pluto, it would hurt to look at, though it wouldn't seem any bigger than a star.

Annular and partial are not quite the same thing.

Annular is as you stated, when the distances of the sun and moon are such that although the orbits line up, you don't get the classic totality.

Partial is when you are not positioned within the path of totality (if there is one) on Earth, and so you see neither a total or annular eclipse; during a partial, there's always some crescent portion of the sun visible.

Quote: Chuck

Annular and partial are not quite the same thing.

How about that.

I've seen an annular eclipse and a total. Once you see a total eclipse, nothing really comapres with it. I guess I assumed partial and annular were the same.

2. Avocado.

Really.

I'm a picky eater, quite sensitive to textures as well as taste and smell. here's how I categorize foods I don't like:

a) Don't care for it. The taste is not bad, but I'd rather have something else. I can eat it, though, if nothing else is available.

b) Don't like it. The taste is bad (to me), but I can stand it. If nothing else is available I'd rather skip that meal unless I'm too hungry.

c) Dislike it. The taste is so bad I won't eat it. If nothing else is available, I'll skip that meal even if I'm too hungry

d) Makes me sick. Either taste or texture are so bad I can't physycally put the thing into my mouth. I'd eat it only if I were starving (literally starving; ie on the verge of death by hunger), and then with deep reluctance. This category includes all fish and seafood, but also avocado, unprocessed tomatoes and grapes.

With avocado my particular beef is with the texture, although I dislike the taste as well. The combination is nauseating. I refer to this fruit (it is a fruit) as "vegetable sh--t."

So what, right? Just avoid it.

Sure, except it's not that simple. In mexican cuisine avocado is used way too much. It's put on salads, sandwiches (particularly mexican style sandwiches like tortas), soups, stews and darn near everything else but dessert. In restaurants this has two adverse effects for me:

1) the menu doesn't mention a particualr dish comes with avocado, therefore I don't know to order without it.

2) even when I know it's on a dish and I order without it, better than half the time they put it in anyway. I know a little about restaurants. One thing is cooks hate special orders and tend to ignore them.

So can't I just scrape it off and eat my meal?

Sometimes. Sometimes not. Either way it's irritating.

Quote: Nareed

2. Avocado.

Absolutely, completely, off-topic: the first song I ever heard performed by my now-long-favorite musical duo, Small Potatoes, is titled "Avocado". Check out the group and the song -- you might find something about avocado that you like.

I never eat the stuff either. If it comes on a dish, I scrape off what I can and pass it on to my wife, who likes it.

Quote: Doc

Absolutely, completely, off-topic:

Since we're off-off-topic, did you ever see a short-lived series called "It's Like, You Know"? It was developed by some of the people who made "Seinfeld," and intended to be a sort of LA-based similar commedy. One ep the lead character, who hails from NYC and hates LA, asks for a sandwich without mayo. Naturally the sandwich comes with mayo. He then has this confrontation with the waiter:

NYC guy: "Didn't you hear me say 'no mayo'?"
Waiter: "Yes. But I didn't believe you."

I feel like that sometimes.

I love avocado. I wish it were more widely available/utilized more in the States. I hear you on the texture, though. I used to have an aversion to certain foods, specifically raw tomatoes and olives. The texture is a big part of it. Now, I eat them both, although I still cannot bite into a raw tomato as you would an apple, or eat a small whole cherry tomato. I'll have a tomato on a hamburger, though, or dressed in a salad.

What are your feelings on Cilantro? Some people think it tastes like soap. When I was in South America (Peru/Chile), they put mayo on EVERYTHING. It would be hell for a mayonnaise hater.

Quote: Nareed

ever see a short-lived series called "It's Like, You Know"?

Missed it.

Quote: teddys

What are your feelings on Cilantro?

I went through a period in which I frequently got salads that tasted a bit "off" and couldn't figure out what was going on. My wife finally recognized that it was happening at places that put cilantro on their salads. Apparently I don't like it, but not violently so. I don't think I could describe what it is about the taste that I don't like, and I'm not even certain that it is the cilantro. Just sometimes, something doesn't taste the way I think it should, and it tends to happen when the menu description lists cilantro.

Quote: teddys

I love avocado. I wish it were more widely available/utilized more in the States.

I wish it were extinct.

Quote:

I hear you on the texture, though. I used to have an aversion to certain foods, specifically raw tomatoes and olives. The texture is a big part of it. Now, I eat them both, although I still cannot bite into a raw tomato as you would an apple, or eat a small whole cherry tomato. I'll have a tomato on a hamburger, though, or dressed in a salad.

I like tomatoes, very much, once they've been blended, pureed, or otherwise processed. My favorite soup is cream of tomato (with some boiled rice mixed in). I like tomato-based sauces, green or red, used in italian cooking, but also in other things. I don't much like ketchup, but that's because it's laced with enough sugar to melt teeth. But not in salads, burgers, or anywhere else.

Quote:

What are your feelings on Cilantro? Some people think it tastes like soap.

I don't get it too often. Some people use it to make salsa, but more often they use parsley. Overall I can eat most spices used in most dishes.

3. Fish and Seafood.

As I said these things fall in the "it makes me sick" category of food I dislike. But it's more complicated than that. I can take a whiff of either, cooked or raw, and be ok. But prolonged exposure to the smell does make me ill with nausea.

In my job I handle samples of various foods, which sometimes include dried shrimp and, worse yet, dried fish. I can stand it, but I limit the contact I have with either. The problem I do have is when judging the quality of either. I mean, to me all shrimp looks repulsive, so how am I supposed to know whether it's good quality or not? I have to ask other people at the office how it looks to them. Dried fish is judged by smell. Well, worse problem, because I'd rather smell vomit for an hour than dry fish for ten seconds (I mean it).

If that were all I wouldn't even mention it. but there are two other problems:

1) People keep pestering me to try this or that or the other thing, or cooked a certain way, or some new sushi they found, or dipped in some sauce... What I dont' understand is why they even give a damn about what I do or don't like to eat?

2) Sometimes I'm invited to eat at seafood palces. I decline 99.99999% of the time, but sometimes I'm forced to accept. I'm always told "Don't worry. there are other options."

I have this to say: the fact there are 1 or 2 entrees and maybe one apetizer or salad without seafood, doesn't really mean there are other options. Think, would you take a vegetarian to a steak house and say "don't worry, they have salads"?

But even if there were other options, the palce reeks with a smell that makes me sick. You try to enjoy a meal when you're fighting down nausea.

I've taken to telling people I'm mortally allergic to fish and seafood. that's a blatant lie, but it's in self-defense. I tell them first I begin to feel nausea (which is true) and then all sort of anaphylactic stuff may happen (not true), including vomit (true, but not usual for allergies). It helps some.

Quote: Nareed

I have this to say: the fact there are 1 or 2 entrees and maybe one apetizer or salad without seafood, doesn't really mean there are other options. Think, would you take a vegetarian to a steak house and say "don't worry, they have salads"?

I like the fact that you at least will tell people you don't like seafood. In the category of things that drive me up the wall is people who don't say that there is something they don't like to eat. It works like this: group of people sitting around trying to figure out where to go eat. They finally decide on a place, and everybody goes there. Then one person says, I don't like xyz. Why didn't you speak up sooner? So the person sits there and doesn't eat trying to make everybody else feel bad for having picked that spot.

Quote: konceptum

I like the fact that you at least will tell people you don't like seafood. In the category of things that drive me up the wall is people who don't say that there is something they don't like to eat. It works like this: group of people sitting around trying to figure out where to go eat. They finally decide on a place, and everybody goes there. Then one person says, I don't like xyz. Why didn't you speak up sooner? So the person sits there and doesn't eat trying to make everybody else feel bad for having picked that spot.

I agree that sort of thing is annoying. My mother has a similar habit when we're trying to decide where to go. She always says "Whatever you want is fine with me." We'll decide somehow, then when we're nearly there she will say "Oh, what about [some other place]?"

If someone doesn't speak up sooner about not liking x type of food, tough. If they choose to make themselves misserable, that's their problem now.

Cilantro is a creeping menace. I don't think I'd ever had it, or at least noticed it, until a few years ago. Now they put it in everything. It has the smell of dirty socks and tastes like what I would imagine them to taste like. Apparently some people really like it, but I've never met anyone who's neutral on cilantro.


My all-time least favorite food is coconut, for texture, flavor and smell. For that reason alone, I avoid Mandalay Bay.

Quote: nyuhoosier

It has the smell of dirty socks and tastes like what I would imagine them to taste like. Apparently some people really like it, but I've never met anyone who's neutral on cilantro.

There's a fruit called "durian" which smells like rotting garbage. Allegedly it has a very sweet taste. I had the chance to briefly (very briefly) smell one once. It wasn't as bad as most fish, but it was pretty bad. I woulnd't taste it or go near one ever again. I've smelled decomposed meat, and this was much worse.

Yet there are people who not only eat it, but are enthusiastic about it. They even make durian ice cream.

4. Fantasy, specifically Lord of the Rings.

This is on first glance so silly I shouldn't even bring it up, but then I couldn't resist the challenge of making a case.

I've been an avid Science Fiction (henceforth SF) reader and fan for many years. I focus mostly on hard SF (think Clarke, Heinlen, Asimov and Niven), but am not averse to soft SF (like Bradbury, Orwell's 1984, Silverberg, and even some of John W. Campbell's early work) or to the somewhat dumbed-down variety available at the movies (not all SF movies, but plenty of them like Star Wars and others).

Fantasy does have some similarities to SF, and I can see why some poeple like both genres. But most similarities are of form, not of substance. For example, Niven is a master in creating odd constructs and environments where people can live (like the Ringworld, the Smoke Ring, or the decidedly odd colony worlds in his Known Space books), and in propposing strange, non-human sapient beings (notably the Moties from "The Mote in God's Eye.") Fantasy often makes use of odd places and strange creatures.

Also both genres are heavy on adventure, though SF much less so, at least the kind of SF I read.

And that's mostly it. Otherwise the genres are different and operate under different rules, assumptions and conventions. Yes, there is enough overlap that many authors write in both genres, and many people like both as well. Just not me.

Why is this a problem?

When the first Lord of the Rings movie came out I did see it. I didn't like it, and I made a firm commitment not to see the other parts of the trilogy. However a lot of people assumed not only that I'd seen and enjoyed the movie, but had also read the books long ago.

When they found out I had never read the books nor liked the movie, most of them simply dind't believe me. I do not stand having my integrity and honesty questioned, much less over something so trivial as a popular movie. That led to many angry arguments.

Worse yet, some people simply wouldn't let it go. I got long emails examining in Trekkie fashion (this means nitpicking minor details beyond exhaustion) the minutiae of Star Wars in order to prove it was Fantasy and not SF.

One of my cousins made it his purpose in life, or so it felt, to get me to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and some other related book. This despite my protests that I had tried to read the first book long ago, but gave up because I simply couldn't get interested in them (I've given up on 4 books in all my life: Dune, Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Rings and Catcher in the Rye). He insisted I read the whole trilogy before I pronounced I didn't like it.

I recalled some words by an anonymous SF editor*, mentioned somewhere in Asimov's voluminous writings, when he was accused of rejecting a story he had not finished reading: "I don't have to eat a whole rotten egg to know it's rotten." To this day he won't speak to me, which is just as well.

I have to ask: why this obsession by so many people over what sports, food and literature I don't like?

I so sometimes try to get people intersted in things I like, like gambling, science fiction, alternate history and other things. But if they're not interested then they're not interested and that's that.

The fantasy situation dind't die once the Lord of the Rings movie faded away. After a while I got asked about the Harry Potter books and movies (never read or saw one), the Narnia books and lately I've been asked about something called the Twilight saga (whatever that is).

Funny thing is there was one fantasy/horror book series, with a movie, I did read and watch: Ann Rice's Lestat stories. I won't say I liked them, indeed since reading them I gave the three or four books away, but I was interested in the idea of inserting vampires into modern life. But that's minimal in those books. I even toyed with the notion of a kind fo SF vampire, but of course that's been done, badly, several times over. Rice does do a great job defining an entire, near invisible sub-culture. other than that, I found little to recommend.


*Actually Asimov probably mentioned his name, but if so I don't remember who it was.

Quote: Nareed

I have to ask: why this obsession by so many people over what sports, food and literature I don't like?

I guess I wasn't paying close attention -- who started this thread anyway? ;-)

Quote: Doc

I guess I wasn't paying close attention -- who started this thread anyway? ;-)

Who remembers such trivia? :P

It's a cathartic activity. Merely writing it down is enough, whether others read it or not. The explanations I provide are to put matters in context. I don't like baby goat (cabrito), either, but I don't mind going to restaurants that serve it almost exclusively because it doesn't drive me up the wall.

It doesn't really sound like Fantasy is your pet peeve, but rather the concept that people can't accept what you do or don't like.

I personally like fantasy, especially fantasy that turns out to really be science fiction (ie, Modesitt).

But I agree with you on the other thing. My own personal experience was with an ex-girlfriend that didn't like cooked tomatoes, but liked raw tomatoes. This bugged the heck out of me. Tomatoes are tomatoes, so what's the difference? It took me a long time to get to the point of just accepting the fact that: she doesn't like cooked tomatoes. Period. End of discussion. It's not something that needs to be explained or discussed or debated. That's just what she doesn't like.

Same thing with you. It should be sufficient to simply state: I don't like fantasy. And people should be able to say, ok. I might say something like, "Really? I enjoy fantasy. Lord of the Rings was a chore to read through, but I did it anyway. Have you tried any other authors?" And you should say something like, "Yes (or No), I just don't like it." And then I would say something like, "That's cool. Let's talk about gambling."

I also find it somewhat annoying that if you express a dislike for something, people feel the need to convince you that you are wrong, as though your feelings on something have no validity.

Quote: konceptum

It doesn't really sound like Fantasy is your pet peeve, but rather the concept that people can't accept what you do or don't like.

I believe I live my life how I want and everyone else lives their life how they want, and so long as they don't trouble me or start some form of agression on me, I'm content to leave them be, regardless of what I think of their chioces.

Quote:

I also find it somewhat annoying that if you express a dislike for something, people feel the need to convince you that you are wrong, as though your feelings on something have no validity.

See above, but that's just it.

I'm highly individualistic, not very sociable and I preffer to be left alone. I'm also quite eccentric.

This is a bad combination when faced with people who worship the herd or lemming mentality.

Quote: Nareed

I'm highly individualistic, not very sociable and I preffer to be left alone. I'm also quite eccentric.

This is a bad combination when faced with people who worship the herd or lemming mentality.

WOW!!! You just described me to a T.

Quote: timberjim

WOW!!! You just described me to a T.

Probably a bit typical for a web forum highly populated by math geeks. ;-)